The year 1995 was a landmark in the history of watchmaking and advertising. It was when OMEGA launched and broadcast the My Choice advertising campaign worldwide. A sleek visual featuring American supermodel Cindy Crawford with her watch, the new OMEGA Constellation and a simple handwritten phrase: “Omega -- my choice Cindy Crawford”. The visual was brilliant in terms of efficacy. In fact, it was so successful that the Constellation quickly became known to the general public as "Cindy's watch". A popular association. The transfer of image and prestige was highly successful: Cindy Crawford symbolised both brand and the watch in equal measure. While official Ambassadors/Muses are now legion in the watchmaking world, to the point that few brands manage to do without them, the idea was revolutionary at the time. And we owe this intuition to a communications and marketing genius, Jean-Claude Biver. In a sector of activity turned on its head by the quartz wave, he was the first person to understand that the watch had lost its primary function of telling the time. Whereas the first people "embodying" watch brands reinforced the technical legitimacy of the timekeeping instrument - as was the case with the swimmer Mercedes Gleitze who wore a Rolex Oyster during her 1927 Channel crossing, thereby demonstrating the water resistance of the watch - nowadays Ambassadors are Muses and their image is used to propagate a lifestyle, "glamour", "attitude"... in short, a dream!
Fast-forward ten years and it’s no surprise to find Biver at the head of the Hublot Manufacture, launching numerous football partnerships with the same effective approach (read article here).
And why exactly was OMEGA's 'choice’ of Cindy Crawford so successful? Because the model, who embodies the independent and self-confident contemporary woman, succeeds in the challenge of pleasing men without making women jealous! Cindy Crawford embodies OMEGA's core values: a cult of beauty and reliability and a deep commitment to tradition. And Cindy Crawford embraces OMEGA's values. The association worked so well that in 1995 the muse contributed to the design of the new Constellation collection, which she wanted to be both feminine and practical. While the iconic model, which was created in 1952 and owes its name to the star placed at 6 o'clock, has of course retained its distinctive mark - the four gold claws screwed onto the bezel whose original purpose was to ensure water resistance - it has been updated and made more feminine. Thanks to Cindy and her aesthetics (one being considered after the other and vice versa depending on your point of view), the Constellation is the practical and feminine luxury watch for the modern and independent woman. For each launch, OMEGA called upon its Ambassador to ensure consistency and positioning, while renewing the Constellation collection to reflect the times. And the partnership is still working just as effectively 25 years later, so much so that... Cindy Crawford is still the official ambassador of the watch-making company.
Over the past 25 years, she has enthusiastically supported numerous OMEGA operations, both charitable - for example, Orbis International, a flying eye hospital - and commercial - for example, at official OMEGA store openings.
As proof of her commitment to OMEGA, Cindy Crawford welcomed her own children, Kaia and Presley Gerber, into the OMEGA Ambassador Family at the opening of the OMEGA "Her Time" exhibition in Paris in 2017. Two Generations, One Choice: the circle is complete and Ambassador status becomes a family affair!
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